White House Adviser Slams 'Anti-Trump' Russian Scandal Investigator

By: Jim Owen | December 5, 2017

A top Trump administration aide, blasting the Justice Department’s Russian election-meddling probe, claimed this week that a former member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s legal team was biased against the president.

It is “disturbing and troubling” that the investigator was “decidedly, definitively anti-Trump,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on “Fox & Friends.” She was referring to Peter Strzok, a former Russian counterintelligence expert for the FBI. He recently lost his job on Mueller’s staff after he exchanged text messages indicating he favored Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

The Office of Inspector General, an arm of the Justice Department, reportedly is looking into Strzok’s actions. The officials are examining his contributions to a number of federal investigations, including the FBI’s scrutiny of Clinton for using a private email server when she headed the State Department. On Sunday, Trump called Strzok “tainted.” He tweeted: “After years of (James) Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters — worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.”

Conway also lashed out at Clinton. “We know that she lied numerous times, we know that she ‘BleachBit-ed’ and deleted 33,000 emails, we know that a majority of Americans in all polling say that she was neither honest nor trustworthy,” the presidential aide said. “You do hear people constantly asking, ‘When will she be held to account?’ This is what frustrates people. It’s very frustrating to many law-abiding Americans who look up and always see a double standard, always see special exceptions for Hillary Clinton.”

CNN reported that Strzok, as the second-ranking official in the FBI’s counterintelligence division, was in charge of the Clinton email probe. The bureau eventually concluded that agents had not uncovered sufficient evidence to prosecute the former secretary of state, although Comey initially accused her of having been “grossly negligent” in her handling of classified government information. Strzok changed Comey’s statement to indicate that the bureau chief had called Clinton “extremely careless,” according to anonymous sources. They explained that the language was important because gross negligence is a federal crime.

The sources told CNN that a number of FBI officials were involved in deciding how to describe Clinton’s alleged misconduct. In July 2016, Comey announced that “no reasonable prosecutor” would file charges against her. “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” he said.

Strzok reportedly wrote the order to begin the FBI’s investigation of allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the election. The Justice Department later took over the probe. Mueller has filed charges against fired national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Flynn agreed to cooperate with the investigation, which could result in legal action against high-ranking officials in the Trump administration. Among those targeted in the probe is Jared Kushner, a White House adviser who is the president’s son-in-law.